


Running From My Destiny Teaser

by StickyKeys1



Series: RFMD Extras [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Character Death, Drama, Heir of Slytherin, Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets, Horror-ish, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom, Non-Graphic Violence, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StickyKeys1/pseuds/StickyKeys1
Summary: [TEASER]Tom Riddle escapes from the diary after being awake and trapped for fifty years. Harry Potter’s Slytherin sister gets expelled from Hogwarts and finds herself in debt to her mortal enemy. A strange turn in events leads to an uneasy alliance between the two as they struggle to help each other find the light. But just how far can you run from a dark destiny? [BWL Harry, no bashing]Tom screwed up the diary Horcrux. Harry and Ruby run away from the Dursley's at the age of seven. Lily's blood protection works a bit differently. Ruby Potter picks up Tom Riddle's diary at Flourish and Blotts, and kind of enjoys causing a bit of chaos with the help of the Heir of Slytherin. Sirius is just generally along for the ride.  Remus is aghast.Harry honestly did not sign up for this.
Series: RFMD Extras [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062536
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Running From My Destiny Teaser

**Author's Note:**

> This is a teaser/short prologue that I've been playing around with! I am still working on finalizing the plot outline, playing around with some ideas, and making my chapter backlog.
> 
> Tom Riddle’s mind is its own content warning. Beware if psychopaths disturb you.
> 
> [edit as of 12/14/20] RFMD is out!

Prologue: The Jackal

The cry of the jackal was high and mournful as it regarded the lone boy standing in the courtyard. Smoke trailed from the fingers of his left hand.

The boy lifted the lit cigarette to his mouth, closing his eyes, and winced. The sound was penetrating. He exhaled bitter smoke, looking around surreptitiously. The last thing he needed was Mulciber or Avery, or worse yet, a professor, coming around the corner.

He did not relish the thought of having to explain a nicotine addiction at this present moment (or any moment at all).

Because that would require explaining the Blitz, too, and Merlin knows these morons were oblivious to the _world war_ that was currently going on. They wouldn’t concern themselves with Muggle politics until the bombs were exploding over their heads.

On second thought, he’d quite like to see a bomb exploding over the idiots’ heads.

He already had an inordinate amount of detentions with Dumbledore as it were, and unfortunately only a finite amount of patience.

And then he had to tutor that ditzy Gryffindor girl _again_ today after he finished that extra assignment for Slughorn, and then he had patrol duty tonight with that irritating Ravenclaw git — oh, _fuck it all._

It was taking the entirety of his aforementioned very short patience today not to fly off of the handle and completely lose his temper.

Losing his temper, as the half-a-dozen morons he generally associated with had come to know, generally involved mass destruction.

Discovering the basilisk was very, very cathartic.

He just might set it on that Gryffindor girl after this.

He couldn’t stand her whiny voice.

Every tutoring session required increasing amounts of self-control (and most recently, dosing himself with illegally-purchased Calming Draught) not to brutally murder her on the spot. In fact, he only managed to stay sane by imagining her dead body.

This led to unexplainable smiling at very inappropriate points in time.

Just last week, he’d been imagining a particularly calming tableau of her guts on the carpet while she was twittering on about how she’d broken up with her boyfriend.

She’d started _bawling_.

Honestly, the crying had upset him less than the fact that she’d broken one of his favorite reveries.

Ugh, the crying. He couldn’t stand crying.

The boy tilted his head back against the stone wall, inhaling greedily.

If only he could get rid of that crick in his neck.

The smoke stung his throat.

_That’s better. So much better._

He hadn’t intended to come out here today. He’d promised himself that he would quit smoking (about the twentieth time this year). But he needed this; the heady, pleasurable mix of nicotine, smoke, and rebellion made him feel alive.

The thought was saddening. So few things brought him actual happiness.

The boy inhaled more smoke as he considered this. He worked his shoulders, trying to get rid of the crick.

No, nothing brought him actual happiness. He couldn’t remember ever being actually happy.

His mental state instead swung wildly between the extremes of total numbness or quasi-concealed frustration that degenerated into giddy rage.

He glared at the jackal, who continued to regard him steadily with its ancient, liquid eyes. He thought the animal looked a bit judgmental.

The jackal howled again; high, piercing, and almost human. Its eyes narrowed to dangerous slits and its disproportionately large ears twitched back and forth.

The cigarette had burned down to a stub between his fingers.

The boy dropped the cigarette on the stone floor, and ground the light out with his heel. His mouth tasted foul.

He steeled himself for what he was about to do as he flicked the ashes away from his fingertips.

If he had not been so absorbed in his musings, he might have wondered what a jackal was doing so far north. It was strangely out of place in a medieval Scottish castle.

He might have even taken the presence of the jackal as a bad omen. But Tom was, as a general rule, neither superstitious nor sentimental.

He brushed the hair out of his eyes — he needed a haircut badly, but he hadn’t had much time for self-care recently, what with taking vengeance on people who pissed him off and prefect duties — and considered what he was about to do.

He’d been stalking her for a while, that annoying little — Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff? — who cares? — spotty bint with spectacles. Tom couldn’t remember her name either, something like Sibyl maybe?

What was really important about whatever-her-name-is, was that one, the weepy bint happened to frequent the bathroom with the entrance to the Chamber — that circumvented his recent issues with discreetly transporting a sixty-foot basilisk — and two, nobody liked her and it would take a while for anyone to find her body.

It was a perfect plan. He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, trying to contain his excitement.

 _Calm down,_ he told himself. _There will be time for celebration later._

The jackal bared its teeth, crouched to spring in an instant.

It was quite a frightening sight; beady yellow eyes with the pupils shrunk to black points, fur standing on edge as if electrocuted, and a wide-open mouth filled with white daggers.

Tom swore and reached for his wand.

A Stinging Hex should do the trick.

Clearly the jackal had an acute sense of self-preservation, because it glared at him one last time before leaving, its feet skittering softly on the stone floor of the courtyard.

The jackal turned back to face him at the edge of the courtyard, letting out one more anguished cry before disappearing into the distance.

He was unnerved slightly, but his resolve was unshaken.

Tom did not heed the jackal’s warning.

————

Act I began.

It didn’t take long for her to run into the bathroom, sobbing her eyes out over something about an olive and her glasses. The stage was set.

Tom waited to hear the stall door swing closed before he entered. The sound of sobbing was only slightly muffled.

He hated the sound of crying.

He’d couldn’t remember ever doing it. Silly habit, begging pity from strangers.

He supposed that if he’d had a mother to cry for, the behavior might have been reinforced.

Weeping Sibyl’s crying reminded him eerily of the sounds in the orphanage during the Blitz. He did not cry as sky and ground shook and bombers hummed threateningly above each night.

Tom Marvolo Riddle did not beg for pity, dirty Muggle blood or not.

He was an egotistical bastard, after all, and he knew it. Self-awareness was key. At least he had the competence to support the ego.

Tom turned to the sink, staring into the eyes of the snake.

_Open._

He watched with satisfaction as the snake’s mouth grew and the sink shrunk until there was a hole in the floor large enough for a man to crawl through.

Or, for Tom’s purposes, large enough for a basilisk.

He called, and it came, slithering up through the pipe until it filled the bathroom.

He encouraged the serpent in Parseltongue.

Weeping Sibyl’s stall door opened a crack, and Tom urged the serpent towards it. The combination of risk and control was heady and exhilarating. He just might give up smoking, if he could do this instead.

_Almost._

The thrill of controlling the sixty-feet monster was intoxicating. Tom could feel the anticipation of the basilisk too, the mounting excitement that preceded the kill.

_Now!_

The girl slumped to the floor with a satisfying finality. The curtains came down. The serpent returned to the Chamber.

Tom smiled.

It was perfect.

Cinematic, even. Choreographed.

No mess, no evidence. And now he had want he wanted. A torn soul.

Now, for Act II.

He’d already prepared for this; all that was lacking was the last step of the process of severing his soul completely.

_Finally._

He, Tom Riddle - no, _Lord Voldemort_ \- was about to take the first step towards becoming immortal. To becoming the greatest wizard of all time.

He was about to master the most terrible of all dark magic.

So much for the name-calling and heckling of his classmates. No longer would he be _Tom Riddle_ , the poor, brilliant, Mudblood son-of-a-whore, as Abraxas Malfoy had so generously dubbed him.

He would finally wash himself clean of his sordid beginnings.

Now he was about to meet his destiny.

He had been expecting the pain.

Pain beyond belief and imagination, as everything in his body ripped and tore. He bit down on his tongue and tasted blood, his vocal cords torn from screaming.

Then, as the pain subsided, he felt pressure. He was too numb to feel more than a twinge, even as every atom in Tom’s body rearranged itself into the pages of a book.

_Wait. This wasn’t supposed to happen!_

He was inside the diary. No, not quite. Even worse. He _was_ the diary.

He was awake.

Was the other fragment of his soul mindless? An empty body crouched over a book?

He tried not to think about it. He tried to stay calm.

On the bright side, Tom thought, he wouldn’t have to tutor today.

_What could have gone wrong?_

Maybe the spells he cast to weaponize the diary interfered with the Horcrux creation; maybe that was where he went wrong.

_A counter curse?_

But he was without his wand and his body. Even if he had them, Tom knew that such a thing could not be undone. He could not put his soul back together. It was an irreversible process; _Magick Moste Evil_ and _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ had both been abundantly clear on that.

Act III was not going as planned.

T.M. Riddle was trapped, alone, in the pages of a book, with nothing but regret for company.

For all eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment if you enjoyed/or didn't enjoy reading this.  
> I will probably be ready to start releasing RFMD properly next month.


End file.
